Soon after adding the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog flag, I realized why it was removed the first time. It can and will kill teammates. It was nice for a day.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Thanks to The Most Awesome Allejo, we have a new spawn algorithm plugin.
All spawns are directly facing the enemy's team flag. If you fire immediately on spawn, it will be aimed at the enemy flag,
It now becomes much harder for you to carry genocide. If you do get a geno kill, everybody respawns with you in their sights.
It does have a bug at the moment, occasionally you'll spawn high at the geno penalty box. I think we'll be able to get this fixed soon.

In other news,
I know some players don't like it, but I'm probably going to stay with four shots through the summer. I want to keep the total amount of firepower available at one time to a reasonable amount. That's why i reduced the total number of flags in 2014 when the extra-shot flags became too much.
What do you think about five shots with a longer reload time?

I did add SW and F (Rapid Fire). Plus those 2 wings flags under the base. A pretty big increase. I may shorten F's range a little.
GM is still unlimited (with slightly shortened range), but Laser has a reload time that is now much longer.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Jesus, I havent posted in years....Op, I would like to see how longer more effective Machine gun would work..it is a useless flag in my opinion as it stands. How about extending the range at least 50%?
See you all again in 3 years.....

MG has three variables, and they all interact. Server max shots also plays a role. Change one and the way the others behave change as well. Also, lag.
You gotta experiment to find the perfect recipe. It's harder than it seems.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Ok that makes sense, I would not like to change max shots or reload speed as it is set now just to make one weapon more effective. Thinking out of the box, make it a more desirable flag by using the useless flag variable, meaning every kill with MG, your score exponentially increases with every kill...1...3...5...7.. etc.

Also, a 2 second increase in reverse geno life could cause more death and mayhem....

MACGOSS wrote:Ok that makes sense, I would not like to change max shots or reload speed as it is set now just to make one weapon more effective. Thinking out of the box, make it a more desirable flag by using the useless flag variable, meaning every kill with MG, your score exponentially increases with every kill...1...3...5...7.. etc.

Also, a 2 second increase in reverse geno life could cause more death and mayhem....

The underlined would be awesome. Also the suggestion for MG....personally, i dropped this flag the minute i pick it up. Those changes might make it worth while to hold.

"Trying to reason with a fool is like trying to teach a goldfish to bring you the newspaper"
"Sometimes people try to expose what's wrong with you, because they can't handle what's right about you."
"Measure your words -- they determine the distance of your relationships"

I wanted to call RG "FIVE SECONDS TO DIE" or "52", but did not get my wish.

What is not immediately apparent with RG is that it's zoned so it's NEVER in the center 30% of the map. If you picked it up in the center it would be too easy to geno the other team, especially with lots of players. A little more drop-time is a good idea, but only If i leave it zoned as it is now.
but....
The best flags L, ST, GM, F, and (fast)BU, are all zoned so they appear only in the center 30% of the map. The idea for this is you have to be in a dangerous area to find them, and once you do get them it's harder to get to an outside area for camping.
The idea of RG is to have a possible penalty when you go flag shopping. It's the ONE bad flag. I've been thinking about putting it back in the center 40% zone with the best flags. If i do that, I'm definitely not making the hold time longer.

More about flag zones.
You may have noticed that GN, AS, and the other extra-shot weapons are not in the "best flags" list...
and if you look at radar, you will see that there are never any flags at all, within 30 units of the outside fence... with rare exceptions.
If you do happen to see a flag near the outside fence, it is definitely one of the extra-shot weapons. They are not zoned and may appear anywhere.

Someone once mentioned making every flag no-drop like RG, so you're stuck with the first flag you pick up. I don't think that that would be so great.
One kill per flag is also possible. your flag is taken away after each kill... We already have that with the ono-on-one plugin, it could be expanded.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

One suggestion, I know that ctf ruins has this plug in. Could you possibly add the "even teams" plug in? Or whatever it is technically called?
And maybe make capping when they are uneven more severe. Some people find it way to amusing to be an "A*hole"...
Ruining their score a bit more may fix that. Or something.

Those are just my thoughts...

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

@OD, It seems too often that the the teams become completely segregated on the score board. The stronger team faces no challenge while the opposing team is spawn killed by L and F.

I seem to remember mofo at one point experimented with some team balancing where, iirc the best player could be switched to the other team. What if this was reinstated with a twist, where instead of switching the top player to the struggling team, the lowest score player on the struggling team was moved to the stronger team? Or swap the lowest scoring players of each team. Complexities of the implementation might include details like a time threshold that the teams must be fully segregated, the player being switched shouldn't have *just* arrived, etc.

In any case, the team balance seems to be a problem. It's hard to tell if it's gotten worse lately, but I think it has. Alternatively, this situation may suggest there is a problem with the mechanics of the map and then it may be better to just make some adjustments to that end.

Team switching (without rejoin) was never taken into consideration when BZFlag was originally developed. At first I was quite amazed that it works at all.
TeamSwitch had a rare but dangerous bug and we weren't sure what caused it. The plugin was removed around the time Airstrike and Grenade was added, then we just kinda forgot about it.
But overall, it was definitely a good thing. We'll take another look at it. Thanks for the reminder.
Even if we do bring it back, it will still be an ugly hack method of getting something done. I predict it will never be 100% bug-free for all players, at all network conditions.

There is another something in the pipeline, it will help to keep the weak team from being wipe-out dominated. At first there will be a few complaints, but when they get used to it I think everyone will like it. Newbs will absolutely love it.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Hmmm... Guess I need to read the boards a bit more often so that I don't get so frustrated

I agree with the team balance issue. Some nights there is no digging out.

One thing I liked about the original map was that the team that just got capped all spawned on their pad. Mayhem frustration at its best. It wasn't all bad for the spawning team. Sometimes spawning in with the team flag caught the capping team off guard on their pad.

For year twenty seventeen I'm switching to roman numerals, but still spelling it out. ExEx - VeeEyeEye. I know, MMXVII is correct, but i don't care about correct.

Map geometry changes will be large, but located in the relatively inconsequential "corner villages" that are the last remnant of Dutchrai's original map. (with the box wall texture.) I have tried four times to change this area, but have always rejected the changes because i think the original was done extremely well. My changes were not an improvement. Hopefully, this time is better. I'm calling it an experiment, the changes may not be permanent.
Also at least one new plugin, thanks to Allejo.
You should see this next weekend. I'll make another forum post after it goes live.

In other news:
There has been some controversy lately about the high "escape" teleporter with random destination. It is indeed random. There are six teleporter, each with two sides. When you go through the random one, there is a 1 out of 12 chance that you'll come out of ANY of the other 12 teleporter "sides". If someone happens to get the one lucky teleport, it's pure luck. Even if they get it 2 or even 3 times in a row, it's still pure luck. These things do happen by random chance.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

1. Shot Limit Zones now display shot limit at flag pickup. (Still not perfect because i have shot limits on both zoned and unzoned AirStrike,AS flags.)

2. The much anticipated Anti-Bait is now baked into Apocalypse Team-Flag-Geno function!!!
a. A high ratio of deaths to kills makes players ineligible to be geno'd. The bait still respawns at the penalty box, but the team is not killed.
b. This ratio increases as your number of deaths increases.
c. I will not be releasing the exact ratios to avoid players gaming the system. You'll have to guess, but I will say... Until you have cat-like accumulated more than eight deaths, you will not qualify for bait status.
d. If your team is geno'd, you can be reasonably sure it was an actual player that got hit, not a potato.
e. Not yet tested in conjunction with score restore-on-rejoin plugin.

3. A few plugin tweaks elsewhere. We currently load 26 plugins.

5. PROFIT!
More info after the map goes live tonight.

In response to lkjhg.
Not less laser, more cloaks. I am making six cloak flags, twice the number of any other flag. The map additions might make laser a lot harder to use without killing yourself too. I haven't really tested that yet.
There is no flag RF, rapid fire is abbreviated simply F. Yes, F is coming back, it was removed by mistake.

Take a look at my Defender game mode concept.

Thinking is not an automatic process. A man can choose to think or to let his mind stagnate, or he can choose actively to turn against his intelligence, to evade his knowledge, to subvert his reason. If he refuses to think, he courts disaster: he cannot with impunity reject his means of perceiving reality.

Hi, im Kernel_Panico* and also edroshz. Im just sign up for propose an idea:

Apoc is loosing his players because the massive camping. In the last weeks is like a desert, the few players are looking for someting less annoying, or quitting.
The new map allow even more camping than before, F is more powerfull, i can camp in the center and kill a lot.
Seem too that GM have more "torque", i cant avoid that than before, that makes GM more powerful.

I know that the policy in Apoc is almost unlimited shoots, but having Laser, GM and F with unlimited shots is really bad.

I propose something different:

STEPS:
1) Grab L, you have 10 shots. In the moment you grab L a yellow flag show up near you.
2) When your shoots are over you cant shoot anymore but you still have the L flag unless two things happen.
*)drop L, you can shoot again, regular bullets.
**) touch the yellow flag and you get another 10 shots round.
3)Die trying grab the yellow flag or repeat the step 2

with this you have the option to be an unlimited camper if you have the balls to try to grab the REFILL flag.

Another things can be added like every time you refill the distance between you and the yellow flag is longer, or every refill you have less bullets, like 9 first time, 8 second time, etc.

Tell me what you think guys, because im seriously thinking quit bzflag to play another games.

I support this idea. Need something to do to the players returned to Apoc.
The second option is just to go back to the old version of the Apoc.
PS Please do not quit bzflag. It's a good game and you are a good player.

-) If no one is in the game, the server put 4 bot players ( or 6 or 8 ), 2 greens, 2 reds.
-) One human player enter, then take the place of one of bots, still 4 players
-) Until 4 human players, no more bots.

This can mantain a few lonely players distracted while awaiting for more chalenging players get in, and avoid a little bit the camping.
This is used for example in WARTHUNDER to avoid the long wait to start a match, just a few bots, the rest humans.

The bots can't take "advanced" flags like F, WG or GM, only US, SR, QT, T, etc.
Killing a bot give you 1 point, killing a human 2, or 3 or 4 points, that depends on the flag he is carring (L 4 points, F 3 points, WG 3 points, etc).
Killing the FP carrier give you Fifty points!
If you grab the geno or enemy flag, all enemy team (including bots) enter in rabbit hunt mode on you!!! (a different color than manual hunting).
They cant genoing or be genoed but can return the team flag to the center.
Etc, etc.

Tell me what you think

Last edited by edroshz_Kernel on Mon Feb 06, 2017 4:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.